“In its first six months, the Support Team Assisted Response program, or STAR, has responded to 748 incidents.”
A clinician and a paramedic in a van took 748 calls. None needed police and none ended in an arrest. The pilot only runs weekdays, ten to six. Over 2,500 calls in that stretch fit the program, so most of them still got an officer with a gun. The city sent armed police to mental health crises for decades because nobody tried anything else.